Cannes Golden Palm-winning director Jerry Schatzberg will present three of his earliest films at next month's 48th Karlovy Vary international film festival.

Schatzberg, who won Cannes' top award in 1973 for his tragi-comedy Scarecrow, will screen that film along with his recently restored 1970 debut, Puzzle of a Downfall Child, and drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.

Karel Och, KVIFF artistic director said: “Jerry is one of the seminal directors of his age -- occupying an exceptional position alongside the generation of talented filmmakers credited with the renaissance of American film during the 1970s."

“There has long been a need to reappraise his historical significance and, as KVIFF continues to explore this influential decade, it is a tremendous honor to welcome such an outstanding filmmaker and we are delighted that this year’s festival offers him this platform," Och elaborated.

Schatzberg worked as a highly regarded photographer in the 1960s, shooting iconic images of Jimi Hendrix and Andy Warhol. His photograph for the cover of Bob Dylan’s album Blonde on Blonde has acquired cult status.

His first three films are numbered among the influential works produced during the the New Hollywood movement of the early 1970s when independent filmmakers merged domestic and European influences.

Schatzberg turned his attention to lost and injured characters in his later works, that mirroring the breakdown of consensus in mid 1970s America.

Political themes are apparent in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) and Honeysuckle Rose (1980). He returned to drama with Reunion in 1989.

Karlovy Vary, located around two hours southwest of Prague, Czech Republic, is one of Europe's leading international festivals. It has established a reputation for screening rarely seen films, particularly from the New Hollywood period in the U.S. Each year up to 350 directors, actors and other filmmakers attend the festival along with around 850 other industry professionals.

It also has won praise for its Asian and Middle Eastern focuses. This year, it also has a special focus on Kurdish film that will include 15 features and shorts.

Landmark films such as Yilmaz Guney’s Yol (1982), long considered the cornerstone of Kurdish cinema, will screen alongside the work of up-and-coming filmmakers. Salem Salavati, whose Cannes Golden Palm-winning short, Silent (2012), and his parable and tribute to the culture of Iranian Kurdistan, The Last Winter, both will be featured.

British director Mark Cousins will also return to Karlovy Vary with The First Film, made in the Kurdish village of Goptapa, which Saddam Hussein attacked with chemical weapons. Cousins' film is a meditation on whether the dreams and memories of the local children left behind have anything in common with his own childhood in Belfast.